Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Stephen Spruiell explains, once again for those who were too thick to understand this point the first time around, why stimulus money for construction jobs did not stimulate employment.

Byron York notes how Nevadans are so very much against Harry Reid's bill. And there is this interesting piece of evidence that the whole plan won't work the way the Democrats are arguing that it will.

Just to show you how much Nevadans dislike the plan, 19 percent, nearly one-fifth, of those polled say they would pay a fine rather than go along with the government's mandate that they buy health insurance.

Remember that a big part of the Democratic plan is to pay for health care by bringing in young healthy people who don't have insurance into the market by mandating that they buy insurance. They need those people to be paying in to the system in order to use their money to pay for expanded coverage. So there is a mandate to force them to buy insurance, but, in order to not seem so harsh the fines aren't as high as originally talked about. So, as any economist could tell them, a considerable number of people would prefer to pay a $750 fine than to pay thousands of dollars in insurance. So how will non-compliance with the mandate affect the claims that the Democratic plan won't bust the budget?

Ramesh Ponnuru has a good warning for the Republicans - they shouldn't get cocky about this year's election. There are still quite a few reasons why things could all change around from the way things look today. After all, they're not the "stupid party" for nothing.

Eric Holder said last year that Americans were too cowardly in discussing race and what we really needed was an honest discussion of race. Well, Harry Reid's gaffe can serve as a throat clearer for that discussion. The Democrats want to use the NAACP ratings to prove that they do more for black people than Republican critics of Harry Reid do. As Jonah Goldberg points out, the NAACP ratings are just a proxy for supporting liberal policies. Neither party is really racist at this point in history; they just have different approaches to helping the downtrodden. Ask yourself if Democratic policies such as welfare and support for union teachers have really helped minorities?

Jennifer Rubin comments on the unions going to the White House to beg the Democrats not to build their health plan by taxing union workers who have gained the so-called Cadillac health plans. The question is - if they're not going to get the money by taxing those plans, where are they going to get it?

Who’s the likely victim? Well, it seems that “labor leaders may push for a bigger increase in the Medicare Hospital Insurance tax.” Because we haven’t stuck it to health-care providers or endangered the fiscal viability of Medicare enough, I suppose.

Well, Democrats are bound and determined to push something through. Now the only question, it seems, is determining which groups will hate the bill more: union members, seniors, young people (forced to buy insurance), the Left, the Right, good-government types, independents, or tax-hike opponents. So many groups, so many grievances.

Tom Maguire thinks that "Obama is cooking with gas," as he notes that CBS's newest poll shows that support for Obama and the Democrats' health care plans are down, but support for keeping terrorists in Gitmo is up. Way to go, Barry.